With My Heart in My Mouth
by schweinsty
Summary: It starts easy, so Dean doesn't even notice for ages. It's just that he messes up a lot, and Dad worries about him (and Dad lost Mom and Sam, and he can't lose Dean too). Pre-Series AU. TW for abuse.


A.N: Trigger warning for child abuse/abuse of an adult child. Also, Dean has lots of issues, and his POV reflects that. Please tread carefully if you're triggered.

**With My Heart in My Mouth**

The thing is, it starts easy, so Dean doesn't even notice for ages.

See, one night after a run-in with a rawhead they've just hit the hotel, achy and tired and bruised; Dean flops onto the bed after he showers and channel surfs until he hits on a Godzilla marathon on AMC (the old-school shit that Bobby rented for them the week they stayed with him and ended up with chicken pox). Dad's got his guns out on the table in front of him to clean, his favorite .9mm disassembled already, the take-out menu on the counter for when he's done. There's a steaming cup of coffee at his hand, and the smell of it almost makes Dean set aside his bone-deep weariness and grab his where he left it by the tv.

Then Sammy walks out of the bathroom, hair carefully combed, mouth set, unpacked duffle slung over his shoulder, and just like that the world drops out from underneath Dean.

"I got accepted at Stanford," he says when Dad asks.

There are words. Lots of yelling. Dad, at the end, speaking quiet and calm and angry like he never does except when one of them endangers the other on a hunt, and Sam ignores him and slams the door behind him. He doesn't even look at Dean before he goes.

The remote control cracks in Dean's fist. He didn't even realized he'd grabbed it. Dean's lungs feel small and his lips feel cold and his fingers don't feel like much of anything at all until the newly-ragged plastic clutched in his hand digs into his palm enough that blood drips through his fingers.

"Dad-" he says.

And John Winchester grabs his coffee cup and throws it, and it hits the wall several inches from Dean's head.

See? It starts out easy. Dad throws a cup of coffee at a wall, and some of the coffee splatters on Dean but it's not hot enough to burn and no one's hurt, and Sammy's gone and everything's wrong but Dad and Dean are fine.

* * *

The next time, they're in Rhode Island taking down a poltergeist. It's not too hard for them to handle, but it's not the easiest hunt they've taken on and Dean-see, Dean still hasn't gotten used to hunting without Sammy, so when the poltergeist traps him and Dad in a living room and starts throwing furniture around, Dean wastes several precious seconds reaching back to yank his brother behind him by his sleeve and grabbing air instead. So he's only got one hand on his shotgun and his line of sight is elsewhere, so Dean doesn't get the poltergeist before it slams his dad against the wall and breaks four of his ribs.

When Dean goes to help his dad up after the cursed antique pendant causing problems is disposed of, Dad reaches up and slaps him on the ear.

"The hell, Dean?"

And Dean shrugs and apologizes and says it won't happen again sir, and he walks his dad back to the Impala and listens dutifully to the lecture on rookie mistakes and staying focused, and the guilt and shame burn considerably more fiercely than his ear, which only gets a little hot and itches.

* * *

(One time. One time Dean was thirteen and Sammy was nine and Sammy almost drowned in the motel swimming pool while Dean was shut up in the bathroom, leafing through the magazine he'd found instead of watching Sammy. The front desk clerk pulls Sammy out and brings him back to the room, clingy as fuck and crying, and Dean saw the guy look around and knew they only had till evening before CPS got called, if that. He packed Sammy up and left a message on Dad's phone, and they camped out in the woods nearby until their dad got back from Minnesota three nights later.

Dad waited until Sammy was tucked up in bed asleep before he sat Dean down and asked him what had happened.

"That's not good enough," Dad told him. He made Dean stand up and shuck his pants and lean against the wall in his boxers, and he slid his belt out of his pants and doubled it up in his fist. "You should have been watching him, Dean. I left you in charge and-he could have died, son."

"You think you're man enough to hunt?" Dad said when Dean made noises loud enough that Sammy mumbled in his sleep and turned onto his side. "You're old enough to take the consequences of your actions like a man."

And Dean never blamed Dad, because he'd shirked his responsibilities and Sammy had almost died, and it was only fair that Dean should be punished and there wasn't anything wrong with that and Dad was just being a good dad, but a long time after that he remembered that Dad never told them what he'd been hunting in Windom, and Dean thought maybe it was selfish but not knowing what was important enough to take Dad away for a week when he said he'd only be gone a couple of days and Sammy was so bored and Dean was fucking sick of watching Sammy swim-it rankled, just a little bit.)

* * *

Four months after Sam walks out and doesn't come back, Dean and Dad track a demon down to Salt Lake City. They corner it in a library a little after midnight. Dean's playing bait at the reference desk, plastic bottles of holy water tucked under his coat, when it drops down on him from the top of the folklore shelf. It grabs Dean's hands and pins his wrists down over his head before Dean can spray it, kneels on his stomach and grins down at him.

And just then, for one quick moment that's gone almost before it comes on him, Dean stops fighting back and goes limp instead, and as he waits for it to kill him he doesn't feel fear or anger or anything but throat-aching relief and makes his last breaths huff out of his mouth in a laugh.

Then Dad shoots the thing with rock salt, and by the time the demon's got its wits back Dean's halfway through the exorcism rite.

"What was that?" Dad asks when they've salted and burned it and set the place on fire so they can't be traced. "What were you, trying to get yourself killed?"

And Dad says it with an angry laugh that means he doesn't mean it, but Dean doesn't say no, and Dad's back stiffens.

"The fuck," Dad says, and Dean's opening his mouth to lie when Dad's fist hits him square in the mouth.

"I'm sorry," Dad says later, when he's got some scotch in him. His eyes water and he pulls Dean in and holds on like he did the night Dean's mother died.

"I can't lose you too," Dad says, and Dean swallows the blood in his mouth and puts it out of his mind.

* * *

(The first time Dean almost died on a hunt, Dad waited until he healed up before he tripled Dean's training routine. The fourth day running suicide sprints on legs that hurt so much he wanted to cry, Dean stumbled over to a shrub in the middle of his jog and threw up everything he ate for breakfast.

"It's for your own good," was all Dad said, and Dean remembered how terrified his father looked when Dean got stabbed, so he wiped his mouth and got back to running. There were black spots crowding out his vision when Dad finally called it a day, and he felt so nauseated he couldn't eat supper and made Sammy worry.

But Dad told him, after Sammy fell asleep, that he did a good job.)

* * *

The thing is, Dean fucks up a lot. In Spokane he misses a rune mark carved into a floorboard that any hunter worth his salt would notice, and it almost gets Dad killed. Oklahoma City, he gets tangled up in chains by a ghost in the parking lot outside a bar because he couldn't take his eyes off the cute little waitress's ass. Fremont, he lets his guard down and almost ends up getting drowned in a bathtub with half an inch of water in it, and Dad has to rescue him and give him rescue breathing, which means the kelpie gets away, and it takes them two more deaths before they track it down again.

He makes a lot of mistakes, is what, stupid things because he can't keep his head in the game, and Dad-Dad just needs him to stay focused. Dad's just worried about him; a little bruise on bicep where Dad socks him in the heat of the moment, or if Dad slaps him on the face when he wakes up in Fremont, spitting up water and gasping for air like a landed fish-they don't mean nothing. It's just that emotions get high on a hunt, and everyone says and does things they don't mean sometimes ("I'm done with this life, Dad; I'm not ending up like Dean"), it's nothing.

It's not like Dean's a child. He's a grown man with access to more weapons than most people will ever see, and if anything hurts him he knows how to take it down.

* * *

(The second time Dean almost died on a hunt, Dad didn't up his training regimen, just told him he was glad Dean was okay and said they had a lot of things to work on, still. Dean didn't realize how tense he was after he healed up until Dad corrected his stance one day at the firing range and Dean flinched.

There was an off-duty cop at the lane next to them, and his eyes tracked both of them until they left.

Dad took him and Sammy to the carnival that afternoon. He showed them how to beat the horseshoe toss and bought them churros and candy and so much soda Sammy runs around on a sugar high for hours.

"You know I don't make you train to punish you, right?" Dad asked him as they waited for Sammy outside the bathrooms.

Dean blinked. "Uh, duh."

Dad smiled. "Just making sure, buddy."

He set his hand on Dean's shoulder and squeezed it, and Dean felt warm and safe and full and took a great, big bite off of Sam's cotton candy stick.)

* * *

Just shy of a year after Sam walks out of their motel room and doesn't walk back again, Dean and Dad work a job with Caleb and Bobby up in Montana. Dean hunts where Dad says and studies what Dad asks him to and sleeps when Dad tells him they're done with research for the night, and it must work because the whole thing goes off pretty much without a hitch. No one's really hurt; Caleb sprained his wrist, and Bobby got a couple bumps and bruises, and Dean has a cut that only needs a couple stitches and nothing else.

He forgets about it, though, in the shuffle on their way out of the hotel, because everyone's in a hurry to get back to Bobby's so they can get a good night's rest for the first time in a week, and Dean drives most of the way back because he's 'got young eyes' to see the road with, running on that little sleep, so he figures he'll just take care of it back at Bobby's.

Of course, he's so tired from driving that when he gets back he flops down on Bobby's couch and doesn't wake up for sixteen hours, and by then the wound is red and raw and weeping, and Dad's face tightens instantly into a worried frown (he lost Mom and he lost Sam, and he can't lose Dean too) and he sits Dean down in a chair and says "Goddammit, Dean" and backhands him on the left side of his face, and it's not a big deal, it's not, and Dean's just thankful Caleb's still dead to the world so he can't see firsthand what in idiot Dean's been, but Bobby watches both of them with pursed lips, and he asks John to stay back a minute when Dean heads out to the Impala.

Dean puts their things in the back and turns on some music and waits. John doesn't come out of the house for a quarter of an hour, and when he does burst out of the kitchen Bobby's behind him, and he's cocking a goddamned shotgun.

"Drop it," Dad says when he gets in and Dean backs out of Bobby's yard. There's a flush on his cheeks that's three-quarters anger and one-quarter something that looks like shame, but Dean doesn't know how to place it.

Dean turns up the volume on Stairway to Heaven but otherwise doesn't say a word.

* * *

(When Sammy's thirteen, someone calls CPS on them again. Dean convinces the woman that comes around that he's nineteen, and she's got enough cases of actual abuse that she doesn't push it.

"Should be obvious we're not abused," Sam says. "Dad's not around enough to hit us."

Dean tells him to shut his mouth, and he doesn't tell Dad about anything when Dad gets back from Minnesota the next weekend.)

* * *

What happens in Waco, though; that's different. Dean's just turned twenty-four, and he celebrates with a six-pack and a friendly girl named Candy and doesn't get back to the motel until five the next morning.

Dad's waiting for him, an empty bottle in one hand and a gun in the other.

"I thought you'd left," Dad tells him. "Thought I'd lost you too."

He stands up and tells Dean to drop his pants and lean against the wall.

"I can't lose you too," he says.

The slither of his belt through his belt loops is familiar, for all that Dean hasn't heard it in years.

Dean doesn't make a sound. He wonders, later, if that makes Dad angry, if that's why Dad keeps on going, because he thinks Dean isn't learning his lesson. Because Dad just keeps going and going and doesn't stop until Dean's knees buckle and he slides down the wall and lands on welted thighs, and Dad keeps going still for a couple minutes before he seems to realize he's catching Dean's stomach and shoulder and chest and the side of his neck and staggers away.

When Dean wakes up at eleven that morning, he's still lying on the cheap linoleum floor. Sun streams through the window and makes his head hurt, and Dad's left a note on the table and taken off to hunt down a ghoul he hear of up north in Minnesota.

The skin on his legs and back is all angry welts that don't stretch with the rest of his skin when he stands, and it hurts like a bitch. There's bruises, too, and when Dean looks in the bathroom mirror there's a reddish-purple mark across his lips and one cheek where a stray hit got him when he fell.

And it's that, really, that does it, because maybe Dean fucks up a lot but he didn't last night; he's twenty-fucking-four, not fourteen, and Dad had no right treating him like a fucking child and spanking him, and it's not the fucking first time he's gone off to get laid and if Dad had a problem with that he sure as hell never said anything before, and this-

This isn't right, and Dean is done with it.

It hurts to pull on his pants, heavy denim like a pan scourer on his skin, and sitting down in his baby is a fresh and special hell, but once Dean's driving he cranks up the music and lets the wind wash through his hair.

He doesn't realize where his hands are taking him until he crosses the state line into California.

* * *

(Dad didn't mean to hurt him; not really. Dad was just worried and sad and lonely as hell, and Dean understood what that felt like better than most. And yeah, maybe the first time he realized he'd unconsciously set course for standard something hot and sharp and guilty tugged at his gut, but-

-It was just a visit. Just to say hello. Just to say he understands what Sammy felt like better than most, too, even if 'better than most' wasn't enough to understand entirely, sometimes.)

* * *

When Sammy opens the door there's a leggy chick behind him, both of them dressed to go out clubbing, and Dean never thought he'd see the day.

"D-Dean?" Sam stutters. He staggers, and selfless fucking worry suddenly is on his face. "What the-"

And all that bullshit about understanding Dad evaporates like fog in the middle of August.

"Hey, Sammy," Dean says, and his back hurts when he pulls Sam into a hug so that he whimpers like a goddamned schoolgirl, and he knows he's got no chance of hiding this from Sam, and things are never going to be the same again.

But he thinks, maybe, they're going to be okay.


End file.
